


What We Do in the Dark

by amnevitah



Category: Naruto
Genre: But it's there, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Implied Childhood Sexual Abuse, Sakura Needs a Hug, and Team 7 want to murder her uncle, it's not explicit
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-27
Updated: 2018-11-16
Packaged: 2019-05-29 14:07:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15074789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amnevitah/pseuds/amnevitah
Summary: Sakura’s past is just as dark as the rest of Team 7’s. They just don’t know it yet.





	1. Beware Bright Smiling Faces

**Author's Note:**

> This plot bunny has been driving me mad and I had to get it out of my head so buckle up kids we’re going into some dark territory. Because I love nothing, if not loads of angst. 
> 
> Now before anyone starts ranting to me about how fucked up or how ‘unrealistic’ Sakura’s story is here, keep in mind that I’m drawing heavily from my own very, very similar experiences from my own childhood. Want to read something happy? This is probably not for you. However, if you like to see Team 7 protect each other and send abusers packing, then congratulations this story is for you! I won't lie, I found writing this to be very cathartic.

At first she had no idea that anything was wrong. 

The days when her Uncle Kazuki visited were always an exciting occasion. He would always bring Sakura the best gifts and sweets and cajole her parents into letting her stay up late with them while he told stories. 

And so when her uncle began to spend more and more time with her, Sakura thought nothing of it. If anything she was eager to impress him and earn more treats. He listened to her in a way her parents didn’t. When she told him of the many girls who bullied her for her forehead, he kissed it and called it beautiful. And when she came to him, proudly showing off high marks from her first year at the academy, he stroked her hair and insisted she was ‘such a clever girl’. 

And if those kisses and touches began to stray as she grew older? Well, that just proved he loved her the best. So what if Sakura sometimes felt embarrassed when his hands wandered and lingered too long? Clearly the fault was with her. She would never say anything of course. Sakura wouldn’t ever want to hurt her uncle’s feelings. After all, she was a  _ good girl _ and good girls  _ loved _ their uncles. 

**\--o0o--**

When Sakura became a genin she was ecstatic. 

Whereas once she was cloistered within the walls of school or home, now she was free to wander the village, spend hours in the training grounds honing her skills, and best of all: take missions away from the village with her team for days and weeks at a time. And so she gladly put up with Kakashi’s grueling training regime and Naruto and Sasuke’s constant bickering, happily ignored the dust that dirtied her dress or the bruises she earned while sparring. Because, after all, good girls never complained and Sakura was nothing if not a  _ very _ good girl. 

**\--o0o--**

The first time her teammates noticed that things weren’t quite right with Sakura was when she came to practice late. 

Sakura was never late, if anything she had always been the first one waiting on the bridge in the morning and the last one to go home at the end of the day. And so when she showed up over an hour late one day Naruto and Sasuke were more than a little surprised. 

“Where have you been?” Sasuke demanded, clearly annoyed. A strange look crossed Sakura’s face then, followed by the most forced smile he had ever seen on her. 

“Oh, I’m sorry Sasuke-kun! My uncle needed me to help him with inventory this morning. I guess I just lost track of time.”

Naruto, however, someone long schooled in forcing smiles and happiness despite his often hostile surroundings, was less inclined to let the matter go. “Are you sure you’re okay Sakura-chan? You’re not sick are you?”

“Oh no, I’m totally fine! Just a little late. It won’t happen again, promise!”

And then Kakashi had shown up and the matter was forgotten. 

**\--o0o--**

The second time Sakura’s team took notice of her was right before an escort mission. 

“Well aren’t you a pretty little thing.”

And instead of blushing and thanking the man for his kind words, Sakura flinched as if someone had slapped her. 

She felt the eyes of her teammates boring into her and Sakura hastily plastered a smile on her face and thanked their new client for his compliment. 

And later, when Naruto asked her again if she was alright, she deflected and insisted that she was fine while inside she panicked. They couldn’t know. They could never know. They would hate her if they ever found out. So she smiled prettily and pretended as if nothing was wrong. As if the man’s words hadn’t brought to mind questing hands and whispered praise. 

**\--o0o--**

The third time was the worst. 

Sasuke had been assigned to spar with Sakura that day and for the most part it was like any other fight between the two...until Sasuke pinned Sakura into the dirt by the back of her neck. And instead of struggling and trying to shake him off like any other opponent, Sakura went limp. 

“Sakura?” Sasuke frowned, confused. And then he noticed her hand. 

It was trembling. 

He ripped his hand away as if it had been burned. 

He called her name again, in earnest now. Had he hurt her? What was wrong? Why wasn’t she getting up? Noticing his distress, Kakashi and Naruto wandered over. 

“What did you do?!” Naruto yelled. 

“I didn’t even push her that hard! I swear!”

And as the two screamed at each other Kakashi crouched down beside Sakura and recognized the far away look in her eyes. 

“Sakura,” he murmured softly. “I’m going to help you up okay?” And though she didn’t respond, she didn’t stop him either when he helped her sit up. 

“I’m...I’m sorry.” She whispered. 

“Why are you sorry?” 

“Because I...I’m...I’m just sorry.”

“Well there’s no need for that. We’ll stop for today hmm?”

Her reaction was almost violent. Sakura surged forward, eyes wide and frightened like a hunted rabbit. 

“No! Don’t! I’ll be good, I promise! I’ll do better! Please don’t!” she was crying now, nearly hysterical, and the rest of her team looked on in shock as she begged not to be sent home. Naruto and Sasuke looked at each other in confusion, wondering why on earth she wouldn’t want to go home, and all the while Kakashi quietly attempted to soothe the sobbing preteen before him and pondered all of her strange behavior over the past several months. 

There was only one reason why a little girl would be terrified to go home. Why she would flinch at a compliment made by a middle-aged man or freeze when shoved into the dirt. 

Kakashi was not the sort of man who usually felt the urge to murder people outside of mission objectives but he decided then and there that, the moment he discovered whoever it was that had hurt his student, he would gut them. 

Slowly. 


	2. Of Teamwork and Empty Ramen Cups

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kakashi does some thinking. Team 7 has a sleepover.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one is very short but I had emergency surgery scheduled this morning so the leftover anesthesia kind of hindered my usual writing progress (or coherence). Any mistakes or bizarre sentence structure I blame entirely on that. Really. It was the drugs. I swear.

Sakura didn’t end up going home that night. 

There were far too many variables at play for Kakashi to feel safe sending the girl back to the very environment that had traumatized her. And so he gladly made up some bullshit excuse to her parents about an extended mission before letting Naruto drag her over to his apartment (with Sasuke following along claiming he was only coming to make sure Sakura didn’t have to put up with Naruto’s uncivilized company alone) for an impromptu sleepover. She couldn’t stay there forever, of course, but it would keep her safe and out of the way for what had to happen next. 

Sakura hadn’t said much during her breakdown for him to go on, but Kakashi had some ideas. Though the most obvious assumption would be one of her parents, he had met Kizashi on more than one occasion and the man didn’t remind him anything of the pedophiles and rapists he’d dealt with (and often disposed of) in the past, and neither did Mebuki for that matter. They were far too supportive and trusting of their daughter and her profession to be abusing her. Most abusers chose to keep their victims close and isolated them from others so that they were far more easy to manipulate. Sakura’s parents on the other hand seemed more than happy to see her bring her friends and teammates home with her. No. It wasn’t her parents...probably. A relative maybe? A neighbor? No matter, he would find out.

And gods help whoever it was once he did. 

**\--o0o--**

Naruto found himself almost immediately regretting bringing his teammates over the moment they crossed his threshold. He scratched the back of his head when Sasuke gave his scattered dirty laundry and upturned empty ramen cups an unimpressed look. Sakura seemed to have an equally lukewarm response, her tears and worries long forgotten in the wake of seeing the state of Naruto’s kitchen. Some of his dishes looked like they hadn’t seen soap or water in months...maybe even  _ years _ . She didn’t even want to  _ chance _ a look in his refrigerator. Something told her there was probably something  _ living _ in there. 

“Do you  _ ever _ clean?” Sasuke drolled. 

Naruto glared at him and not so stealthily tried to kick a pile of underwear under his bed. 

“I suppose we could clean up a bit…” Sakura began hesitantly. Though she was already well and truly exhausted (mentally and physically) after their training with Kakashi, she also wasn’t keen on spending the night on Naruto’s dirty underwear. 

“Uhhh, yeah,” Naruto agreed, perhaps too eagerly. “We could do that.”

And that was how Team 7 found themselves scrubbing Naruto’s apartment down from top to bottom. Sasuke because he didn’t want to spend the night in a place that stank of processed ramen and old sweat, Sakura because she was desperate to postpone any awkward questions about her breakdown (...and  _ also _ because of the processed ramen and old sweat), and Naruto, well, who was he to turn down free labor (and oh hey, had his floorboards  _ always _ been that color?)? And so once the (many,  _ many _ ) ramen containers had been tossed out and the dishes cleaned and the dirty laundry pushed into the closet (because, really, what  _ else _ were they supposed to do with it?), the three ended their night piled onto Naruto’s bed, too exhausted to care about who slept where or who stole the blankets at night (it was Sakura). 

It was the first night Sakura slept soundly in weeks. 


	3. The Predator and the Prey

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there is a lot of yelling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I know it’s been a hot minute since I updated but I’ve been distracted. By kpop. And hospital visits (mostly kpop though, because I mean...kpop. Also the new Assassin’s Creed came out...). Apparently I’ll be needing surgery (again, because apparently two this year wasn’t enough for me and I just had to shoot for three. I’m an overachiever like that) before the year is out so that my thoughts have unsurprisingly been on that and less so on my fics. As such I’ve been in a lot of pain lately and today was especially hard so I’m writing the rest of this while currently high on oxy (yeah, it’s been THAT kind of day. Everything that can hurt, DOES hurt. Thus the heavy opiates). So again, if anything sounds weird, blame the drugs. I certainly do. 
> 
> On a side note though, why does my productivity go up when I'm on drugs? I've been struggling with the latter half of this chapter and it just did NOT want to be written. But then I take some painkillers and BAM! Finished in a couple hours. WTF?

As it turned out, Naruto had absolutely nothing in the way of groceries (that weren’t expired or cup ramen anyway) and so Sasuke and Sakura dragged their whining teammate down to the market for breakfast. 

“What about these? You like oranges right?”

Naruto made a face. “Meh.”

“I hate sweet things,” Sasuke added unhelpfully. 

“Ugh,” Sakura rolled her eyes but bought the fruit anyway. “Fine, more for me then.” 

_ Really _ , she thought snarkily.  _ Boys _ . 

As they were moving off to the next stall though, a voice rang out that made Sakura stiffen like a deer caught in a hunter’s line of sight. 

“Sakura!”

_ No _ , she thought frantically.  _ Not now. Not here. _ Her eyes immediately sought out an exit as a large, middle-aged man appeared and laid a hand on her shoulders familiarly. Her heart stuttered in her chest. 

Sasuke sized up the man who had sidled up to Sakura and frowned. He behaved as if they were old friends and yet Sakura had gone from grumbling and rolling her eyes with them to looking as if someone had dropped a bomb on her house. Who the hell was this guy? He spoke to her familiarly, hands rubbing her back and shoulders and staring down at her fondly. But there was something...not  _ right _ about him. Sakura was usually the most chatty of their team, always willing to engage friends and strangers alike in conversation but now...now she was  _ silent _ . Unnervingly so. 

Naruto, though...one look at the way the man’s hands lingered intimately upon his friend’s bare shoulders and her pale, terrified face and _he_ _knew_. She looked exactly like some of the girls he knew when he was in the orphanage. The ones who’d been abused in the most unspeakable ways by those bigger and stronger than them. He felt the blood roaring in his ears as the man babbled on, oblivious to the turmoil he’d brought upon these children. 

“There you are! I came to visit last night but your parents told me you weren’t home. Apparently you’re just too busy for your dear old uncle these days.”

And then, just like that, Sasuke understood too. 

She had  _ begged _ them not to send her home. Had sobbed on the training grounds and dug her fingers into the dirt as if it could keep her there. She’d been terrified. Hadn’t wanted to go home...because of  _ him _ . Because he had been  _ waiting _ for her. Like a  _ predator _ . 

“Don’t touch her.” The words were out of his mouth before he could stop them. 

The man frowned down at the boy, as if he were a particularly annoying insect. “I beg your pardon-”

“I said don’t touch her. She doesn’t like you.” 

Naruto and Sasuke’s eyes met and the look they shared made it clear that for once they were in complete agreement. Naruto’s nostrils flared as he glared back at the man before them. 

“You heard him.”

Sakura’s uncle grimaced in displeasure. “I don’t know where you come off boy-” the man’s fingers clutched at Sakura’s arm until the skin under them turned white. She didn’t so much as flinch, just stared at the ground with a glassy, empty gaze. 

Sasuke snapped. 

“I said stop touching her!” And then he grabbed the offending arm and  _ twisted _ . 

And then all hell broke loose. 

**\--o0o--**

“I’m sorry, say that again?”

“You’re genin team is being held at the administrative office for a prospective court martial!”

Kakashi blinked. 

“ _ My _ cute little genin? Surely there must be a mistake…” he drawled. 

“They attacked a civilian!”

“...I’m sure they deserved it.”

The chunin scoffed in disbelief but Kakashi was already tuning him out and slouching away in the direction of the administrative building. 

Seriously though, how  _ did _ they get into this mess?

**\--o0o--**

Ever since the untimely demise of the Uchiha Clan, Konoha’s local police work had fallen into the lap of the administrative office. Naturally this had only made things far more confusing and difficult for everyone involved but with no other group really qualified for police work the matter was left in limbo until the funds and manpower was available to start a new police force. 

Thus Kakashi wasn’t all that surprised when he arrived to find his team sitting mulishly against a wall while an annoyed chunin presided over them looking as if he’s rather be anywhere else. On the opposite wall, a man stood shouting at a second chunin, pointing angrily in their direction. Said chunin looked less than pleased as he tried to make suitably sympathetic noises as the man screamed at him. 

“I want those boys locked up! They’re a danger to everyone around them!”

“I understand you’re upset Haruno-san, but it’s not up to me as to how or when the boys get punished.”

“Then take me to whoever does make that decision!”

“Yo,” Kakashi exclaimed, happily cutting off the man’s tirade. “So would anyone like to explain to me what’s going on here?”

“Kakashi-san!” The relief the chunin radiated at his appearance was almost embarrassing. However, the relief radiating from his students was even more palatable and all three quickly began speaking at the same time.

“Kakashi-sensei!”

“Don’t listen to him Sensei, he deserved it!”

“I didn’t even hit him that hard!”

Kakashi raised a hand and the three immediately fell silent. “Now,” he said, turning to the man apparently known as ‘Haruno-san’. His eyes flickered to Sakura before settling back upon her relative. “I’d like to hear what happened from everyone here. You first.” Haruno clearly didn’t need to be told twice and furiously gestured to Kakashi’s students. 

“Those boys broke my arm!” The man bellowed and, sure enough, the forearm he cradled in his left hand stuck out at an odd angle. 

“I see,” Kakashi drawled. “And what led up to this act of aggression?”

Haruno stopped, as if confused by the question. 

“Surely they didn’t attack you out of the blue?” He continued, face disarmingly genial. 

“Of course they did!” Haruno replied, righteous anger billowing up once more. “I saw my niece and came to say hello and then these boys just started shouting and broke my arm!”

“Really?” Kakashi exclaimed but was cut off by shouts of indignation from his team. 

“That’s bullshit!” Naruto shouted angrily, fists balled and teeth grinding. “He was touching Sakura!-”

“She was afraid of him,” Sasuke said cooly, cutting off his teammate. Anyone looking at him would’ve thought he was the calm one of the two but Kakashi knew better. Sasuke was  _ furious _ .

Haruno balked, sputtering at the accusation and angrily defending himself but the jōnin wasn’t listening to him, eyes lingering on Sakura’s silent, pale face. 

“You’re awfully quiet over there Sakura,” Kakashi said gently. “Don’t you have anything to add?”

Her eyes grew wide and then darted to the floor as she seemed to curl in on herself. She didn’t say a word. Terror evident in every one of her features. 

_ Well _ , he thought as his eye darted to her relative.  _ It seems Sasuke was telling the truth _ . The odd look on the man’s face said it all. The look of a guilty man trying hard to seem innocent. Kakashi wasn’t an idiot. There was no question as to who this person was to his student...and what he’d done to her. 

“Well,” Kakashi said cheerily. “It looks like we have a lot to discuss.” It wasn’t his team he looked at as he said those words. 

For a single moment, Kakashi thought he saw a trace of fear in the man’s face. 

_Checkmate_. 


	4. Truth and Confrontation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The truth comes out. Kakashi has an overdue chat with Sakura's uncle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I went from wondering how the hell I was going to start this chapter to inspiration hitting during work and then coming home to bang out the entire thing in one sitting. Inspiration is weird. Anyway, here it is kids, the confrontation you've all been waiting for. 
> 
> Trigger warning: Rape is mentioned in this chapter. It’s not explicit and it's very brief but it’s still there and I’d advise all those who don’t want to read that to skip Kakashi’s talk with Sakura.

“Okay,” Kakashi said as the door to the office he had commandeered clicked closed. “Tell me what happened. Sasuke first.”

Sasuke’s eyes were stormy as he recounted what had happened only an hour before. “We were getting breakfast and then that  _ man _ came up and...he was  _ touching _ Sakura! He grabbed her arm and she just... _ let him _ !”

The girl in question looked like she wanted nothing more than to melt into the carpet. 

“And what happened then?”

“I told him to stop. And when he didn’t, I shoved him away.”

“And broke his arm apparently,” Kakashi added wryly. 

Sasuke just stared at him, silent and unrepentant. 

Kakashi sighed and turned to the other boy in the room. “Alright, Naruto, anything to add?”

“He did something to her,” He spat, voice escalating until he was nearly shouting. “I know he did! I could see it! Sakura was afraid of him! And Sakura isn’t afraid of anyone!”

“Alright,” Kakashi said, voice deceptively light. “I believe you.”

Naruto and Sasuke glanced at each other, surprise evident in their faces. 

“Wait...you do?” The blonde asked, confused. 

“Yep,” Their sensei remarked cheerfully, before opening the door once more and gesturing towards the hallway. “Now wait outside. I need to speak to Sakura.”

Sasuke’s eyes flicked to his silent, terrified teammate and then back to Kakashi and narrowed suspiciously. “Why?”

“Because I said so,” Kakashi replied, still overly calm and cheery. “Now out.”

And though the boys looked ready to protest, they weren’t given much choice as their sensei all but shoved them out with a blithe ‘she’ll be fine’ and then locked the door for good measure. Not that a simple lock could  _ actually _ keep them out, but it was the  _ principle _ of the thing. He sat down in one of the empty chairs with a weary sound and scrubbed at his eye with his palm. 

Sakura just stared at him as if he was going to bite her. 

Kakashi sighed. “I realize this is the last thing you want to do, but you’re going to have to tell me what happened.”

Sakura blanched and then mumbled quickly, “Sasuke and Naruto already told you what happened-”

He gave her a  _ look _ . “You and I both know that isn’t what I meant.”

If anything, Sakura looked even more uncomfortable than before. 

_ Well _ , Kakashi thought,  _ this is going well _ . He’d never felt more like a scumbag than in this moment. Years of torturing enemies for information and listening to the begging of assassination targets and he’d never once balked, but forcing a 12 year old girl to confess her abuse? He was more than ready to just let her sit in silence for the rest of the night. But at the same time though...

“I get it. Really,  _ I do _ ,” Kakashi began tiredly. If anyone understood the desire to never, ever talk about their trauma, it was him. “But if you don’t tell me what happened I’m going to have to go out there and let that man go free. I can’t keep him here without a reason.”

“I…” Her voice trailed off, barely more than a whisper. He could see the gears turning in her head, weighing her choices, fear warring with shame. 

“Give me a reason Sakura.” He looked her in the eye, trying to convey everything he would do for her if she just said the words he needed her to say. “And you’ll never have to see him again.”

“I…I  _ can’t _ ,” She choked, swallowing a sob. “You’ll  _ hate _ me.”

Kakashi suddenly had to force down the need to smash something. “ _ No _ ,” He replied coldly. “It’s not  _ you _ I’ll hate.”

Sakura only looked more skittish, eyeing his clenched fists with disbelief, so he stood, stepping towards her to crouch in front of her instead. He didn’t touch her, but she leaned away anyway. 

“You don’t have to tell me,” He tried again, an idea forming in his mind. “So what if you show me instead?”

“Show…?”

He tapped the hitai-ate slumped over his left eye and her own eyes widened in realization. She was silent for a terribly long time and he didn’t dare break it, watching the idea turn over in that deceptively quick mind of hers. 

“Will it hurt?” 

He fought the urge to laugh, tension leaching from his shoulders. Of  _ all _ the things for her to ask…

“No,” Kakashi assured her gently as he pulled up his hitai-ate and Obito’s sharingan began to spin. “You won’t feel a thing.”

And then he saw the scene in her mind. The towering form of the man from before, whispering to her soothingly to stay quiet and that she was ‘such a good girl’. The large hands that wandered into places they shouldn’t. He could feel the embarrassment as her nightdress was lifted, the crushing press of a man far heavier than her bearing her down. But most of all he felt the  _ shame _ . The  _ fear _ . The utter  _ confusion _ . The feeling that she must’ve done something to  _ deserve _ this somehow...

The sharingan snapped shut and Kakashi pulled away, deathly silent.

He’d seen all he needed to see. 

**\--o0o--**

The man (what had his name been? Kazuki?) almost didn’t notice Kakashi entering the office 15 minutes later. After he’d finished with Sakura he’d left her in the care of her teammates with instructions to take her elsewhere. Then he’d made two clones. One to inform Sakura’s parents of what was going on.

And the second to inform the hokage of what he was going to do. 

Kazuki watched the jōnin curiously as the door snapped closed behind him. “So did you punish those boys yet?”

“No.”

He frowned, annoyed. He opened his mouth to say something but Kakashi cut him off as he sat across from him. 

“Here’s what’s going to happen,” He began with false cheer. “I’m going to give you a choice Haruno-san.”

The man stared at him uncomprehendingly. “A choice…?”

“That’s right,” Kakashi continued. “You see I can’t just kill you outright. Too much paperwork.”

Kazuki paled, horror dawning across his face. “K-kill me?!” He sputtered. “What the hell are you talking about?!!”

“Oh well, you see there would just be so many questions and the hokage looks down on just killing people in the village without his say-so. You understand.”

The man gave him a look that said he very much did  _ not _ understand. “But you can’t-”

“I don’t know if you noticed Haruno-san but this is a military dictatorship. I can do whatever the fuck I want.”

The sound that came out of Kazuki very much sounded like that of a man being hanged. Kakashi would know. 

“You haven’t asked me why I want to kill you yet.” The jōnin prompted, clearly enjoying watching the man squirm. He stared at him expectantly until he realized that Kakashi expected him to say something. 

“...Why do you want to kill me?” He sounded like it was just now dawning on him that this entire situation wasn’t just some bizarre fever dream. 

“Well, it’s funny you ask that,” Kakashi said happily. “Because as it turns out, I just learned that you’ve hurt one of my students.” The atmosphere grew suddenly cold and claustrophobic and he continued, “And if there’s one thing I can’t abide, it’s when  _ someone fucks with my students _ .”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about-”

“Don’t bother lying to me. I do it for a living.” 

“Those boys attacked me! I didn’t do anything to them!”

Kakashi’s smile grew positively feral. “Who said I was talking about the boys?”

Kazuki grew even paler, but then suddenly became angry. Like a cornered animal that knew its options were few. “You have no proof!” He spat accusingly. 

“Ah, well there’s where you’re wrong Haruno-san,” Kakashi said, lifting up his hitai-ate and snapping open his sharingan. “You see, I have all the proof I need.”

And then he caught the man in a genjutsu, forced him to see what he’d done to Sakura from her perspective. And when he was done Kazuki was silent and still and terrified and all he could do was whisper, like a lifeline, “You said you wouldn’t kill me...”

“I did,” Kakashi agreed. “And I said you have a choice.”

The man looked as if he were afraid to ask, but he did anyway. “What...what choice?”

“Which do you prefer? Your hands?...Or your balls?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Want to guess which one he chose?


End file.
